Truly frightening, and still underway, in Kansas:
The prosecution of a Planned Parenthood affiliate here, the first such criminal case in the nation, has been treated locally as something of a proxy in the battle over abortion rights. Derided by supporters of the organization as politically motivated, the prosecution was celebrated by opponents as the capstone of increasingly aggressive actions here and elsewhere against Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other services at clinics around the country.
Remarkable that it is now acceptable to casually state that a criminal prosecution is being used as a “proxy” for a political battle. Not good, Kansas. Never a good idea.
So it came as a surprise to many this month when county prosecutors here announced that after years of legal battling, they had been forced to drop nearly half the charges, including all of the felony counts, citing — of all things — faulty record keeping. The misdemeanor charges, which involve accusations of failing to fully determine viability before performing some abortions, are still pending. The revelations that documents in the case had been destroyed years ago added a fresh dose of controversy to what has been a particularly strange chapter in the abortion fight in Kansas, a messy and tangled case that emerged out of a wide-ranging investigation into abortion providers and has been consumed by allegations of misconduct by political leaders on both sides of the issue.
The state’s vocal, and increasingly empowered, contingent of abortion opponents, including a number of Republican elected officials, wondered aloud whether a cover-up was to blame. And Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri questioned whether prosecutors were encouraging conspiracy theories as a way to blame abortion rights supporters while abandoning a losing case.
Peter B. Brownlie, president and chief executive of the local affiliate, praised the dismissal of the most serious charges and said the organization would prevail on the remaining ones. “There’s no question that political opponents of Planned Parenthood and abortion would have been emboldened by a conviction, particularly on a felony charge,” he said.
The case emerged from a long investigation by one of the state’s most polarizing elected officials, Phill Kline, who had used his position as Kansas attorney general and later as Johnson County district attorney to crusade against abortion providers, earning a series of official rebukes along the way for his tactics, including a recommendation last month by a state board that he be prohibited from practicing law in the state. Though the investigation, started in 2003, initially centered on explosive allegations that abortion providers were not reporting all cases of child rape, the charges Mr. Kline eventually filed in 2007 were far less wrenching, including that Planned Parenthood failed to maintain copies of abortion paperwork (a misdemeanor) and, fearing detection, completed the paperwork after an investigation was begun (a felony)
So he never had anything at all on the child rape allegations. Not that it matters. The damage was done and the political objective was met when he made the allegations.
As the case was being prepared for trial, Steve Howe, the Johnson County prosecutor who took up the case in 2009 after defeating Mr. Kline in a Republican primary, discovered that the records that were to be used as evidence had been destroyed years earlier, the originals by the Department of Health and Environment and the only authenticated set of copies by the attorney general’s office. As a result, Mr. Howe told a judge this month that there was no longer enough admissible evidence to proceed with 49 charges, including 23 felonies.
But supporters of abortion rights disputed the allegations that the documents were intentionally, rather than routinely, destroyed, and questioned why they had not been requested and secured previously. “It’s a red herring to avoid having to walk into court, present the case and lose on the merits because there was never any crime,” said Pedro Irigonegaray, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood.
Abortion opponents have spent a lot of time, money and energy rebranding their movement as akin to a soft-focus mother and baby Hallmark card, rather than as a religious crusade focused on vengeance and punishment. Tactics like this one contradict that carefully crafted marketing, and more like this may make people sit up and take notice.
They’ve been engaged in what looks like a purely politically motivated prosecution in Kansas since 2003, and now that the anti-abortion state-actor crusaders can’t prove the explosive and damaging allegations they threw around, they’ve come up with an elaborate conspiracy theory to save face and cover for the fact that it sure looks like they never had much of anything to begin with.
Oh, and extra points for dragging Katherine Sebelius into this dog and pony show, conservatives. It just wouldn’t seem right if Obama wasn’t somehow implicated, in everything.
Forget all the sentimental blather about mommies and babies, and look at the actions. These folks play hardball.
Linkmeister
I wonder how the disbarment hearings about Kline are going, or in whose hands said disbarment might be by now.
Svensker
And who pays Planned Parenthood for all the money they had to spend on attorneys and bullshit?
Oh, right. Never mind.
General Stuck
We need to melt that wicked witch of the west, so Kansas can have nice things again.
kay
@Linkmeister:
Not moving at the speed of light, apparently:
Does one have to be admitted to be a law professor? I don’t remember. I would think so, but it is Liberty, so there’s that.
sherifffruitfly
(shrug) Electorates get, what electorates vote for.
Fuck the former slave states. If they ever want better for themselves, they can damn well VOTE for better for themselves. Just like the rest of us. The fact that they don’t is evidence that they don’t want any better. So be it.
Mark K.
Kline conducted his witchhunt all on the taxpayers dime. What a lying scumbag!
EvolutionaryDesign
Absolutely disgusting and reprehensible. Of course, when you fight dirty, you get away with this kind of stuff thanks to American’s short, easily-distracted attention spans. Bummer.
burnspbesq
This is hilarious. The evidence was destroyed pursuant to ordinary document retention policies because nobody bothered to put a litigation hold on it? Unpossible. Maybe this is only funny to a lawyer, but I am DYING.
And yes, disbar the bastard with all possible haste.
Villago Delenda Est
It has NEVER been about “mommies and babies”. It’s about controlling women, and about punishing those who DARE to have sex.
It’s about fucking. That’s what it is about.
pablo
Kansas…a police state.
MeDrewNotYou
@kay: The dude does shit that his fellow lawyers think merits being disbarred, yet I guarantee that he’s earned tons of bonus points in the anti-woman community. Like you pointed out, he’s now a law professor! He’s responsible for teaching the next generation about our legal system. The legal system that doesn’t think he’s fit to participate in.
In the immortal words of Professor Farnsworth- “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”
MeDrewNotYou
@sherifffruitfly: The problem is that Kansas was fiercely abolitionist. They were fiercely progressive too, until the 50s or 60s. Read What’s the Matter With Kansas for details. I don’t completely agree with all of Thomas Frank’s conclusions, but he does give a good outline of the decline of sanity in the state.
Brian S
@sherifffruitfly: Kansas was admitted as a free state, not a slave state (though there were plenty of attempts to make it so). But more importantly, it’s not like it’s only the deep South where abortion rights are under attack. The mountain west, for example, has some of the most restrictive abortion laws on the books. This is a national problem, not a regional one.
scav
Protecting “mommies and babies” Right. Nah, it’s about buying their way into heaven by dictating their choices upon on the bodies of other women (and other people in general but especially women and gays) with side effects up to and including death. It’s almost as though St. Peter demands green stamps at the pearly gates and they’re saving up and need actual bodies to remember how many they’ve accumulated. And these lot are the self-appointed moral and enlightened heart of the country because the women weren’t necessarily shoved in burquas along with all the other absurd things inflicted on them. Got it. Furthermore they’ll do and cheer and laud all this holy laywering and then faint away at the dreaded menace of taqiyya.
Gromit
Tangentially related, but I drove from Atlanta to Orlando yesterday, and it seemed like the moment I crossed the state line there was an anti-abortion billboard every quarter mile. Why is that? Is Florida really different from Georgia in some fundamental way? I’d blame the economy, but it seems like it’s been this way for a long time.
kay
Great comment Brian S.
It’s not just Kansas. It’s national.
We’re in this together.
Brian S
@Gromit: I think the difference between the two areas starts around Orlando and continues south. South Florida–with the notable exception of the Cuban community and other pockets–is way more liberal than the rest of the state, so much so that I’d love to see the state divided in half at some point so the two can go their separate ways. I think the billboards are an attempt to “convince” voters that Florida needs to be as dark red as Georgia and Alabama when it comes to abortion.
Joey Giraud
@Gromit
Here in Minnesota, Interstate 35 between Duluth and the Twin Cities is plastered with dozens of the most gawd-awful “save the babies” billboards imaginable.
Great name, BTW.
suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Absolutely right. Except for the times when it’s about alternately shaming/cajoling those who dare NOT to have sex. The Madonna/whore dichotomy is real, powerful, and pervasive. And 100% bad for women, and the men who hold them in respect.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brian S:
Northern Florida is southern.
Southern Florida is northern.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
Like Upper and Lower Egypt?
Brian S
@Villago Delenda Est: More like northern Florida is southern, southern Florida is Carribbean, even factoring in all the New York/New Jersey transplants. But yeah, south Florida is not southern in anything other than geography.
karen marie
Fixt.
karen marie
Oh, dear — my gmail address puts me in moderation?
JasonF
@burnspbesq: The government is absolutely terrible at meeting discovery obligations, despite the fact that they are one of the loudest voices in demanding perfection from others.. Check out the FOIA opinion from 6-12 months ago from Judge Scheindlen of SDNY. The DOJ was unable to do such basic things as produce emails and attachments together.
As for what’s going on in Kansas, I’d love nothing more than for the Feds to investigate the Kansas AG for malfeasance. It will never happen, but wouldn’t it be great?
Gromit
@Brian S:
The only other thing I can think of is maybe they are trying to dissuade all those families driving to Walt Disney World from getting abortions there. Kind of like the folks who show up outside Elton John concerts with “repent or face the fires of hell” signs.
Villago Delenda Est
@Maude:
De Nile runs through both of them?
The election of Rick Scott (aka Lex Luthor) would seem to indicate something like that…
BTW, to Soonergrunt: You go, guy. Seriously. These clowns who imagine that two different email addresses is any sort of foolproof way to not be implicated in sockpuppetry…Cole may be IT clueless, but others are not, and can suss this sort of nonsense out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
WIN
Ron Beasley
Too many Christians – not enough lions!
Punchy
Since I cant comment in the below thread, I’ll paste it here: since when does BJ close threads for comment? WTF is that? A drive-by post with no opps to comment on the asshattery of it all? Really, that’s what this site has stooped to? Redunkulous, John.
MeDrewNotYou
@suzanne: While I agree that’s an issue in society at large, I don’t think that’s an issue with the forced birth, anti-woman crowd. To them, any female sexuality is evil; women are sperm receptacles and baby factories and nothing more.
L. Ron Obama
I don’t remember any post ever being closed for comments before. I think it’s kind of a weird and presumptuous thing to do when you’ve only been a frontpager for a few days, but what do I know.
bin Lurkin'
@Punchy: Meh, you give an authoritarian some power and they’re gonna (ab)use it.
Look how long it took, was it in the triple digits for hours yet?
suzanne
@MeDrewNotYou:
For serious? We’re talking about the same forced-birth crowd that encourages women (and girls) to marry young, to stay virgins until their wedding nights, considers “revirgination” surgery a really cool anniversary gift, and said that marital rape didn’t exist. Forced-birth is merely the most egregious example, but these people want to control literally every aspect of female sexuality to make it conform to their social agenda.
burnspbesq
@JasonF:
Dude, you’re preaching to the choir. I do FOIA requests to the IRS. I ALWAYS ask for everything in its original electronic form, including metadata. They ALWAYS give me hard copies. And Appeals won’t do a damn thing about it. I’m going to see Debbie Butler at a CLE event next week. I think I’m going to chew on her about it.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq:
In an adversarial system why on earth would you make things easy for the
enemyopposition?lol
@kay:
It’s a national problem that’s being fought locally. This is what the right understands and the left doesn’t.
The right banks victories inch by inch, state by state. The left sits on its hands holding out for total victory while the walls close in around them.
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
Well, my current FOIA dispute with the IRS is a pro bono matter, and my client is poor enough to qualify for attorney’s fees. If I have to litigate this, it’s going to be expensive for you and all the rest of the taxpayers.
mclaren
@L. Ron Obama:
Buckle up, buckaroo. This is only a foretaste of the sociopathic censorship and frenzied control freakery you’re going to see from our resident authoritarian bully-worshiper, the ex-marine who dotes on torture and openly applauds Obama ordering the murder of U.S. citizens without a trial or even charging them with a crime.
Like all bullies, soonergrunt is a coward. He can’t stand open debate because his sociopathy would be fully revealed to one and all. So he hides behind closed comments, name-calling, vacuous insults and Cleek’s pie filter.
Hiding and running away like a little girl represents the standard operating procedure for all authoritarians. They’re only courageous in packs. Contemptible thugs like soonergrunt are the kinds of guys who don’t have the guts to gang-rape a girl, but will eagerly hold her down for someone else to do the dirty work.
When I pointed out that soonergrunt has a long and disgusting record of cheering on torture and the murder of civilians, what was his response?
To call me a girly-man.
That’s substantive, isn’t it? Hell of an argument you’ve got there, soonergrunt. What a manly man, to applaud crushing a child’s genitals. That’s a real red-blooded all-American man, cheering when a bunch of snipers shoot some pregnant woman from ambush 500 yards away. Yes indeedy, nothing says “courage and manliness” like some lard-ass Air force corpsman pressing a button to blow an innocent wedding party fully of women and children on his remote drone video screen while slurping Diet Coke. That’s what we mean when we think of the words “Duty, Honor, Country.”
You can see why the craven coward soonergrunt has to shut down comments. He’s too gutless to face real debate about real substantive issues…like the fact that the constitution of the united states is being torn up and people like Barack Obama and Joe Biden and John Boehner and all the Republican presidential candidates are wiping their asses on it, and crutch-kicking bully-worshipers like soonergrunt are enabling America’s rapid descent into barbarism and lawlessness.
You want to know why soonergrunt has to shut down comments and censor open debate?
Here’s why:
Like all authoritarian cowards, soonergrunt’s only answer to this kind of argument is: a boot in the face.
To paraphrase George Orwell — if you want to see the future of Balloon Juice with soonergrunt as a front-pager, imagine a boot stamping in a human face forever.
Bad mistake making this sociopath a front-pager, Cole. Bad bad mistake.
MeDrewNotYou
@suzanne: I’d like to retract my statement. You’re completely correct. I think I was going towards ‘female sexuality=evil and so it must be repressed,’ but I missed by a huge margin. I’m hanging my head in shame.
piratedan
@Punchy: did u guys read the post? all he was doing was being transparent about banning folks for sock puppetry and you wanted to be allowed to pile on or comment to what purpose?
JasonF
@MikeJ: Because the rules require you to do so. Leaving aside the fact that the Federal Rules require you to produce metadata, for years judges and bar groups have been pushing for cooperation between parties in discovery. It shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect the government to meet those standards.
MikeJ
@JasonF: The law is what you can get away with.
kay
Lol, I could not agree more.
The obsessive, single-minded focus on the federal (national) government has hurt liberals more than anything else.
We’re smart people, but for some reason the only time we can handle addition is once every 4 years, to get to 270
When we said we rejected states’ rights it’s like we rejected state government.
I don’t get it. It’s tragic.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: Now you piqued my interest. Is this in any relation to the Vinatieri decision? A yes or no will suffice. I am on the other side here. :)
And Appeals seems to be a place where cases go to quietly wither away. I’ve cleaned up messes after Appeals gets finished. Not. Fun.
eemom
The guts??
You are one sick fuck.
bin Lurkin'
@piratedan: I saw the explanation for the “sock puppetry” and it didn’t seem unreasonable, I also saw a comment by Cole that seemed to indicate someone’s IP was published. If that happened I’m not sure I care to stay here at BJ..
FWIW, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a formal rule here against sock puppetry.
piratedan
@bin Lurkin’: well i’d like to think that this site is still open to allowing folks of all stripes (or solids) to have their “take” and allow them to back it up with facts, documentation, links or emotion and trolls be damned; but setting up false voices or identities to “strengthen” your position is a definite no-go zone for me.
suzanne
@mclaren: You’re beyond disgusting.
Yutsano
@mclaren: tl;dr.
And that’s the second pro-pedophilia poster we’ve had. Is there something in the water?
lol
@mclaren:
Someone sounds upset that their sockpuppet got banned.
sherifffruitfly
@Brian S:
Eh. State, territory – whatever.
sensoryoverload.typepad.com/sensory_overload/2004/11/free_states_vs_.html
suzanne
@Yutsano: Maybe they’re the same person? I’d hate to think that pedophiliac fantasies are that common.
kay
FWIW I like soonergrunt and I don’t think one mistake makes him a monster.
Too, I know you-all had to talk about him in this thread because there wasn’t an open thread but John has an open thread now.
Since the complaints about SG are really addressed to John and John isn’t reading this thread, I think you should take them up there where he will read them.
MeDrewNotYou
@suzanne: You have more faith in humanity than I do.
bin Lurkin'
@piratedan:I’m interpreting that to mean that you haven’t seen a formal rule against sock puppetry either.
And as I said, the explanation I saw for what happened didn’t seem completely unreasonable.
Perhaps Cole can launch a few committees to investigate and report back in ninety days or so?
bin Lurkin'
@suzanne: Covering up for actual pedophiles on the other hand seems to be rampant if the stakes are high enough.
MeDrewNotYou
@kay: Can we make requests for future posts? ‘Cuz I really enjoy the ones where you talk about Congress shirking its duties and forcing the President to accumulate more powers. You know, the whole checks and balances thing. I think that in relation to the super-committee and deficit reduction could be an interesting piece.
ETA- I ask that here since you were talking about other threads. It was my half-assed attempt to not be totally OT.
eemom
@kay:
except that the thread in question is of that oxymoronic persuasion known as a “football open thread”. Football threads are not “open”. Au contraire, they are the only ones where not only does no ever go off-topic, but everyone stays ON-topic with the fixed, obsessive focus of the borderline insane.
Not that there’s anything WRONG with that….
kay
Medrew
Sure you can request.
I love that subject, as you can tell, and the supercongress is just another congressional dodge and duty-shirking
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
Nope. Disclosure couldn’t find a return even after I gave them the DLN. I even broke down the DLN into its component parts and told them exactly where in Fresno the return should be.
Unbelievable.
eemom
correction: or maybe it’s hockey. They’re all the same.
bin Lurkin'
To get on topic, because it is an important one..
I’m slap dab in the middle of the Bible Belt and am surrounded by forced-birfers, their single strongest characteristic is a remarkable tolerance for cognitive dissonance. I can think of several I know who have personally had abortions as teens and yet are full metal jacket anti-choice zealots.
I think one of the reasons liberals shy away from state level politics is that the opponents have been nuts to some extent for a long time, it’s really starting to seep up into national politics now but it’s been like that where I live ever since I can remember.
Religious nuts in a country as knee-jerk religious as the USA are hard to fight because you end being labeled as anti-God very quickly. The secularists in our society would and often do fight but a great many moderate and liberal Christians really don’t want a major theological pie fight with the crazy right wing Christians right out there in front of God and everybody so they wishy wash and both sides the same, tut tut..
kay
Okay eemom good point, but I can’t stick around for SG complaints because I like SG and John runs the site so they belong with John.
But if there’s no open thread I know people want to talk about it, so feel free.
I’ll just say again that I think one mistake does not make him a bad person, and leave it at that.
MeDrewNotYou
@kay: It has been a little while, what with all the fun in Ohio.
@lol: This is a key observation and the same thing happens with science education. We liberals seem content to stop egregious BS from Congress and sometimes state legislatures. Meanwhile at the local level, crazy fundies fill up the school boards and insert all manner of nonsense into the curriculum while liberals sit idle.
From my experience not too long ago in high school, even when there isn’t explicit teaching of creationism or intelligent design, it still happens. All but one of my teachers who touched on evolution went out of their way to try and discredit the science. As far as I know, the school board never tried any shenanigans. Granted, this was in Indiana, the northern most southern state, but I don’t doubt the same goes on across the country.
MeDrewNotYou
@bin Lurkin’:
Don’t you know that it was okay for them? Their situation was different and special. They prayed about it and God understands. But when those other dirty whores do it, they’re evil and must be shamed.
Yutsano
Burnsy, I would die laughing if it weren’t so serious. This thing has to have been in ACS at some point. I wish I weren’t personally entangled with you I’d try to save the government and your client a shit ton of grief.
celticdragonchick
Mcclaren doth protest too much, methinks.
celticdragonchick
@MeDrewNotYou:
You start noticing apattern of local churches, sympathetic politicians and deep pockets out of state GOP PAC donors all working togther to put creationism in schools. I just finished writing a paper on this subject. (Not really a fun subject, but something I am passionate about)
bin Lurkin'
To clarify my point a bit, leaving it up to the secularists in the USA to fight the crazy Christian right is a losing proposition if you want your country not to wind up looking like a Christian version of Saudi Arabia.
The liberal and moderate Christians have to engage more than they are or we are done for.
piratedan
@bin Lurkin’: agreed… there’s something inherently wrong imho about caring more about who might or might not be born when there are people living in abject poverty just down the street (or in the street) unable to get a job or health care until disaster strikes and they’re near death.
Sly
Posting a closed comment thread is one of the major steps on the path toward jack-booted fascism, sandwiched between pie filters and temporary bans. We must resist Reichsmarshall Soonergrunt before it is too late!
First they pie filtered the Firebaggers,
and I did not troll because I wasn’t a Firebagger…
agrippa
@mclaren:
psychotic
agrippa
@Sly:
Be afraid be very afraid
agrippa
@suzanne:
@mclaren: You’re beyond disgusting.
mclaren is just another keyboard kommando.
thousand to the penny
Punchy
@piratedan: Because its a fucking blog. Commenting is what a blog is/does. Posts without comment is a Sully site. Thats not what this is, and never has been.
L. Ron Obama
Didn’t mean to derail your thread Kay, I do read and enjoy your posts.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
It’s better than you think it is. The IRS gave my client innocent spouse relief several years ago. I’m trying to get the FTB to give her the same relief. I’m supposed to enclose a copy of the Federal return. Which I can’t do at this point, because disclosure can’t find it. I explained all of this in the transmittal letter to the FTB, and asked them to give her relief anyway, because I have the transcript and it clearly shows the request for relief and the abatement of the deficiency assessments.
Hopefully, the FTB will do the right thing. If not, I’m off to the U.S. District Court, and hopefully Sandra Brown (the head of the tax division shop in the US Attorney’s office) will decide that this is a fight she doesn’t need.
burnspbesq
@bin Lurkin’:
Won’t happen in any organized way. The moderate Protestants are terrified (with good reason) of losing their tax exemption for engaging in political activity, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is a lost cause.
TrishfromLyons
Imagine my surprise when Kansas young voters in which this law clearly effected their lives, stood by and allowed this to happen. Those that DID have an opinion watched as the younger people, were too intimidated to speak up with their opinions. These people today, now see behind the scenes as to how organized and well funded protests work. Too bad, for today, there are many people who are brainwashed as to how they must live by the ‘code’. I hate that they possibly used these illegal tactics, were Yep, legal or not, Klines tactic was successful…by sure domination leading to the guilt and shame to those who young people to
kay
L. Ron Obama:
It’s fine you didn’t derail anything.
I go OT in my own threads, and it’s not something I care about.
I knew you-all would want to talk about it and I don’t want to meddle in that or mediate it, which is what I would end up doing, and DID end up doing, actually, so I wasn’t at all successful in my attempt anyway :)
The Sailor
@burnspbesq: “The liberal and moderate Christians have to engage more than they are or we are done for.
Won’t happen in any organized way. The moderate Protestants are terrified (with good reason) of losing their tax exemption for engaging in political activity, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is a lost cause.”
+++++++++++++++
Your so-called liberal christians are hiding behind ignorance and thinking it won’t happen to them. Fuck ’em.
Almost no one has ever been prosecuted for mixing church & state, they are not “terrified (with good reason) of losing their tax exemption for engaging in political activity”, evangelicals have been doing that deliberately for years asking to be prosecuted. Ain’t happened yet.
And no one in Congress has the courage to shift that IRS rule. (It’s ain’t a law.)
+++++++++++++
You are the problem, since you refuse to be part of the solution.